Me, quoting this guy, quoting that guy

I'm on this email list, "Clergy and Laity Concerned About Iraq," and today someone forwarded the Nobel Literature Prize lecture offered by Harold Pinter, "Art, Truth and Politics." A warning...it's quite long. But it packs a punch.

In talking about the war in Iraq, Pinter says the 2,000+ American dead are an embarrassment, and that when we ignore the destruction our violence is causing (both to our own men and women, and to the Iraqis) we are lying to ourselves. Here's Pinter:

"Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you're making a sincere speech on television."

My boss wrote a column in Spring 2003, We Need to See the Bodies, where he wrote that seeing the bodies is the price the U.S. public should endure for following this illegal, immoral war. "Long lines at airport check-ins or the struggle to find enough duct tape or a fear of briefcases are pitiful excuses for the kind of sacrifice that should be required from any nation aspiring to empire," he wrote. "If the people of the United States are to 'stand by the President,' then the costs should reflect the prize: trillions of dollars in revenues for U.S. oil companies locked out of Iraq for 30 years and control of the very lifeblood and pulse of globalization for the next 50 years. Surely that is worth sacrificing our national psyche and our illusion of righteousness for. Not to mention, no never to mention, our sons and daughters, wives and husbands."

These both offer pretty inflammatory rhetoric, but they serve their point: any nation making war with another nation ought to at least acknowledge the blood spilled on both sides of the battle. But we don't do that. We hide the horrors of war so that wars can continue.

Back to Pinter...near the end of his lecture, he excerpts a poem from Spanish writer Pablo Neruda, who viscerally captures 'collateral damage' in his poem, "I'm Explaining a Few Things." Though I can't speak for Neruda, my guess is that when you look through war with his eyes, you realize that everything is worth pursuing to prevent it.

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!